Black History Month at Kimmel includes two Grammy-winning jazz artists this week

Jazz history is inextricably intertwined with Black history in America. As part of its Black History Month celebrations, the Kimmel Cultural Campus will present performances by two Grammy-winning jazz artists who explore those histories in remarkably different ways: vocalist Gregory Porter and saxophonist David Sánchez.

For Porter, whose rich, robust baritone will grace the Academy of Music on Thursday, history is always personal. His songs honor cultural icons from Martin Luther King Jr. to his musical hero, Nat King Cole, but most importantly they pay homage to the family members who have raised and supported him, especially his late mother.

“If I could paint, my self-portrait would show my toes dug into the soil and my arms stretched out to the sky,” Porter said to The Inquirer. “That is the physical manifestation of what I feel like I’m trying to do with music. My toes are dug into my roots, because gospel, blues, and soul all ground me musically; yet I’m trying to stretch for something that is my own.”

Last week, Porter was in Los Angeles, filming a new video with the electronic musician Moby. It marks their second collaboration after ”Natural Blues,” where Porter sang Vera Halls’ vintage blues song “Trouble So Hard” which Moby sampled on the original track.

“Moby came to me and said, ‘I’m a white guy, I have no connection to [this music]’,” Porter recalled. “That’s my root and my lineage … If I sing like my mother and my grandmother prayed, it keeps them alive as well.”

Sánchez’s interest in history is a more anthropological one. The Puerto Rican-born saxophonist has long been fascinated by the intersections of jazz and his own musical heritage. In recent years he’s broadened that search to encompass more of the Caribbean, visiting Cuba with the all-star collaborative Ninety Miles and now Haiti with his latest project, Carib.

The evolution of jazz is typically depicted as a straight line from West Africa through Cuba to New Orleans. As the first independent nation in the Caribbean and the site of the world’s only successful slave revolt, Haiti was long isolated culturally and Sánchez was intrigued by the way that music developed in parallel with that of the island’s neighbors.

The saxophonist’s interest was sparked by a series of recordings that American folklorist Alan Lomax captured in Haiti during the 1930s. “I could connect with it immediately,” Sánchez said. “It sounded similar to something that I’d experienced before, but in the purest form I could imagine.”

The music Sánchez composed for his Grammy-nominated Carib creates a new hybrid of those influences, built on the foundation of percussionists Jhan Lee Aponte (from Puerto Rico) and Markus Schwartz (representing Haiti). They will join Sánchez and a stellar band at the Perelman Theater on Saturday.

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Gregory Porter plays the Academy of Music on Feb. 16 and David Sánchez comes to the Kimmel Center on Feb. 18. Tickets: kimmelculturalcampus.org